Fuel Smarts

API

Chevron Products Company rolled out an expanded line of Delo 400 heavy-duty diesel engine oils on Dec. 1, the same day that oils formulated to meet the new API CK-4 and FA-4 service categories became eligible to to be marketed and sold.

The industry campaign to develop not one but two new API oil-service categories to eventually replace the current CJ-4 spec for heavy-duty diesel engines is on a fast track for new formulations to be licensed starting in late 2016, according to Shell Lubricants.

Testing is under way for the new API oil standard PC-11, but it could be 2017 before we see it implemented, according to an update from an oil company representative involved in developing the new standard.

What do you get when you put a group of trucking journalists in a room with three tables of engine teardown parts and ask them to choose which one is from the truck running the experimental low-viscosity oil? A lot of eeny-meeny-miney-mo.

UPDATED -- The American Petroleum Institute, which represents the petroleum industry, is suing the Environmental Protection Agency, challenging its mandate for the use of 1.28 billion gallons of biodiesel in 2013, a 28% increase from the 2012 requirement.